Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?

[Esquilax]

If God doesn't exist then what else do you think morality is other than a mutually agreed upon social contract?

Well, for one, it's a mutually agreed upon social contract set within a physical world that constrains us to certain absolutes.

This isn't the moral relativistic bullshit that you guys always seem to want to pin on us. Murder wouldn't suddenly become morally acceptable if enough people were in favor of it, because murder would still violate a number of the truths that we can state about our own experiences in the world, namely that death is not a preferred state of being. Regardless of one's stance on the afterlife, I'm sure we can agree in that: after all, this is the only life that we know we have.

No doubt you're currently combing your mind for exceptions to this, as if a handful of differing scenarios would somehow invalidate the entire position. Of course there are going to be exceptions, because this is a more complex, context driven system than theists typically want to portray it as. These absolutes of reality are somewhat numerous, and applying them properly would take a lot of time and space; all I'm saying is, there are things about being alive that stop vile acts from becoming moral simply because they have majority approval.

Incidentally, your christian religion doesn't solve this problem you've pointed to in secular morality either, because religion is a mutually agreed upon social contract. Whether you think these rules have passed down from god or not, the fact is, you and yours don't follow them all. You pick and choose; this stuff about eating shellfish and stoning people? That doesn't apply. This here, about not killing? Obviously that's divinely inspired! And yet you all disagree on what exactly is and isn't that way, and you all claim your version is the perfect truth, etc etc. Let's not pretend you've got some wonderful, objective system in place; the thirty thousand denominations of your church begs to differ.

Not to mention the concept that we're all born sinners, as well; you guys have failing those "objective standards" built right into the premise of your religion! So keeping them isn't the obligation you seem to think it is.

We certainly do yes. Why do you think we have that?

Wow, did you just not want to read the rest of the paragraph? I already said, it's an evolved mechanism.

Incidentally, why didn't you start out asking questions in the first place?